Net Neutrality 6-12-2006

Net Neutrality Links

I’ve added these links to the Net Neutrality Page today.

Why has Web 2.0 Been (Relatively) Quiet on Net Neutrality??

The point is that I searched through Technorati, and could not find the usual Web 2.0 suspects writing, but just pointing people to fun videos that are cutesy; they are not really taking the banner of Net Neutrality.

I have discussed this with a couple of other bloggers – and wonder if Web 2.0 has not rushed to this because they are so caught up with themselves. Do they think that the banners of open source, community Web, and whatever the buzz words du jour are going to save their companies? If you look at the Web 2.0 sites -Facebook, Riya, YouTube, Second Life, Songbird, BitTorrent and others – they are total bandwidth hogs. Look at how much Second Life is growing, to the point that it is holding virtual conferences, virtual concerts. But at least is it suited to find ways around the potential costs of the loss of Net Neutrality, as it already charges for membership.

And, well, since Friday it is even a bigger issue since the House rejected Net Neutrality.

Now, while the big Net companies – MSFT, Google, Yahoo – have been to the hill to fight for Net Neutrality, the other side of the debate has just been as active. But is smarter and better at lobbying. Just imagine if the Web 2.0 companies rallied their users to send a letter or email to their Senators and Congressman. Would not those voices be heard, or am I a little too Mr. Smith Goes To Washington?

The largest telephone and cable companies such as AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner want to be able to decide which websites run fast, slow or not at all. They want to be able to charge extra money for fast service and if web sites donÃ¢â¬â¢t pay extra then theyÃ¢â¬â¢ll be doomed to a slow connection.

Net Neutrality wants to ensure that all sites get equal treatment.
The supporters of Net Neutrality include leading high-tech companies such as Amazon.com, Earthlink, EBay, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Skype, Vonage and Yahoo. Prominent national figures such as Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig and FCC Commissioner Michael Copps have called for stronger Net Neutrality protections.

For More Information check out the Net Neutrality FAQ
Yesterday the House of Representatives voted NO for Net Neutrality. The list below shows the people who voted. I have arranged them by state so you can easily see how your representative voted. If you are FOR Net Neutrality and your representative voted NO then donÃ¢â¬â¢t vote for him/her in the next elections.
[THE COMPLETE VOTING LIST FOLLOWS]

Famed science fiction author CM Kornbluth wrote one of his most famous stories, The Marching Morons, in 1951, as a commentary about both the general populace (and its collective lack of intelligence) and the ruling elite and THEIR collective lack of intelligence. If you have never read it, youÃ¢â¬â¢re missing out on one of the seminal works of the era, but I find that over time it also seems to be a remarkably prescient look at the US leadership.

This week, the US House of Representatives, largely at the request of a number of well-heeled telco and cable company lobbyists, gutted the Net Neutrality provisions of the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006 (COPE), putting into place instead provisions that enshrined the notion that service providers can charge different rates for different kinds and sizes of packets moving across networks. . . .

What makes this even more egregious, however, is that this is the Internet that is being partitioned, and it is being partitioned not by the web site owners (the REAL producers) but rather by the large ISPs. If youÃ¢â¬â¢re a Ã¢â¬ÅfavoredÃ¢â¬Â site owner willing to potentially pay hefty fines, your content can get where it needs to go across the best networks – if you are a small company or an individual, your content gets routed out of the premium networks, across slower and less favored connections, which are of course also going to be heavily hit because this is where everyone else who hasnÃ¢â¬â¢t ponied up will end up. . . .

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